The spy app offered one even more useful feature. It controlled the cell phone’s microphone and would record any conversations occurring in the office. The phone itself had just been transformed into an audio bug hiding in plain sight. Metcalf would never know his cell had been tapped. When the diviner got back to business the following morning, his every conversation would be overheard by the Arkana. Sooner or later he was bound to say something useful about his master plan.
Erik smiled to himself and slipped the phone back into the drawer exactly where he’d found it. Then he surveyed the room as a whole to make sure he’d moved nothing out of place. Checking his watch again, he decided this was enough to get the chatelaine started. Depending on what she overheard, he would most likely have to come back to search Metcalf’s files. At this point, he still didn’t know what to look for. It was just as well. He wasn’t in top shape yet and tonight had taken a toll. He could feel his bullet wounds reminding him that they needed time to heal.
“Still, it’s a start,” he murmured and limped back the way he’d come.
Chapter 23—Psychic Physics 101
After they left the Jomon settlement site at Ofune, Ken drove the Arkana team about twenty miles up the coast highway. With no advance warning, he pulled off the road, parked the car on an access ramp beside an overpass, and told everyone to get out.
Once the trio emerged from the car, they glanced at one another in surprise.
“This sure doesn’t look like a dig site,” Cassie commented. “It’s a highway running underneath an overpass.”
Ken’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “It’s not the highway that’s interesting. We came to see what’s above it. Follow me.” He began walking up the ramp to the top of the overpass.
The visitors obediently trudged behind him.
When they reached the top, they all paused to catch their breaths. The overpass wasn’t a bridge at all. There were no connecting roads on either side. It consisted of nothing but a flat open space with a number of rocks strewn about.
“What is this place?” Daniel voiced his colleagues’ bewilderment.
“It’s the largest Jomon stone circle on the island of Hokkaido. It measures one hundred and twenty feet in circumference.”
Cassie turned her attention to the design of the circle. Although the position of the stones seemed random at first, she realized that a pattern existed. There were two outer rings and a third oval ring at the center. The stones in the outermost ring were each about a foot long and must have originally been laid end-to-end lengthwise while the ones in the second circle were embedded in the ground at a forty-five-degree angle with the long end pointing inward toward the middle.
“We owe the preservation of this place to Mount Komagatake.” Ken pointed to a volcano off in the distance. “Its last big eruption centuries ago completely covered the circle in ash. When a new expressway was being built here, the Jomon site was sitting right in the middle of the construction zone.”
“So, they dug under it?” the scion asked in disbelief.
“Engineers were able to slide a tunnel underneath without disturbing the circle,” the trove keeper said. “This is now a designated historic site called Washinoki. It dates from around 2000 BCE. In addition to the circle, a pit cemetery was also found.”
“And we came here because...” Cassie trailed off.
“Because I need the help of a pythia to understand what it means,” Ken replied enigmatically.
He walked up to the outer ring of stones. The others followed.
“I wanted to take you to Ofune first, so you could get some sense of what Jomon culture was like. We archaeologists can reconstruct a culture using grave goods, dwellings, and statuary but stone circles are a different matter altogether. They tell us nothing.” He gave a wry smile. “We look at something like this, and it’s all blind speculation. Some believe stone circles are intended to track astronomical phenomena. While that might be true of megalithic sites, I don’t see how that could be the case here. These stones are barely a foot tall.”
The trove keeper turned to Cassie, spreading his arms in helpless appeal. “Can you tell me why the Jomon constructed it and, more importantly, why here?”
The pythia tilted her head, assessing the risk. She couldn’t sense any danger. “OK, I’ll give it a shot, but you guys should stay where you are. Whatever signal I get might be distorted if any of you step inside the circle with me.”
All three men took a step backward.
“We’re here if you need us,” the scrivener reassured her.
Daniel darted him a puzzled glance.
“Griffin has seen the downside of my job more than a few times,” Cassie explained. She took a deep breath. “Here goes.” Then she stepped inside the circle.
Much to her surprise, she didn’t fall into a trance. There were no people from the past wandering about. All she saw were waves of light hovering above the rocks—rising and falling like the Aurora Borealis. They formed concentric rings that followed the placement of the two outer rows of stones and spiraled inward to the center of the circle. “This is strange,” she muttered half to herself.
Cassie stretched out her hands and spread her fingers. She moved like a blind person inching along a dark hallway, trying to sense fluctuations in energy. After advancing to the innermost ring of the circle, she stood for a moment. She could feel herself enveloped in a pillar of
